Message from Mayor of Toyama City
Mayor of Toyama City
Masashi MoriWelcome to Toyama City Global Site “Visit Toyama”!
Toyama City is located centrally on the Sea of Japan coast of the main Japanese Island. To the east it faces the magnificent 3000-m Tateyama Mountain Range, which forms part of the Northern Japan Alps. To the north of the city lies Toyama Bay, a marine life treasury. Toyama City is home to 420000 people blessed with rich nature.
Toyama City is the gateway to the Northern Japan Alps, which is well-known for the Tateyama-Kurobe Alpine Route. This natural resource generates lots of tourism, and is something that other famous tourist destinations in Japan, such as Tokyo and Kyoto, don’t have. Sightseeing spots in the city are located near Toyama Airport, which allows tourists to visit many spots in a short time.
Toyama City boasts some of the freshest seafood in Japan and agricultural products grown thanks to the blessing of its rich nature resources.
Among the local specialties is Masu-no-sushi which is made with rice produced in Toyama and trout, and which is one of the most popular train lunches in Japan.
In the middle of the Edo Period (1603-1867) the pharmaceutical industry was developed here. The medicine peddlers of Toyama traveled all over Japan, employing a unique business style known as “Use first and pay later.” Thanks to them, Toyama City has been well known to people as a town of medicine. In recent years, this unique business style has also enjoyed great success in Mongolia.
The traditional event “Owara Kaze no Bon Festival” has been handed down for generations since the Edo Period. This festival is held for three days from September 1st to 3rd every year, and 250000 sightseers visit the town during the period.
Toyama City has been promoting compact city formation with the nation’s first full-scale LRT (Light Rail Transit) Toyama Light Rail as its leading project, and is making efforts to address the global environmental problems through the forest restoration and the promotion of recycling. In addition, it has been taking proactive and unique measures related to the aging society combined with a low birthrate. As these projects are receiving high evaluations in Japan, we believe that our efforts will be able to offer something applicable to other cities in the world.
On this website, various attractions of Toyama City are introduced with numerous photographs and moving images.
As the proverb says “Seeing is believing,” we would like you to visit Toyama City for a first-hand experience of real Toyama.
You will be sure to find a side of Japan you’ve never seen before.
Mayor of Toyama City Masashi Mori
